Pros and Cons of Fathering Kids in Your 50s

Let’s hear the bad first

• Older Dads don’t have the same energy levels as younger dads and are too tired to play sports with their child when you're 60+ and the child is 10-15 years old. This may be true for some.

• Argument: foods had less preservatives back then and if you are fit you are probably the same level or better

• Old parents worry too much and have less patience for the wandering mind of a toddler.

• Not being able to "retire" due to having to support your child. Going into your "nest egg" to pay for your child’s college when you're almost 70.

• Child being embarrassed as their parents are mistaken for grandparents by everyone.

• More medical research showing higher rates of autism in kids who have older dads.

• Read more: Autism Studies

• Science has found higher incidents in mental illness with older dads.

• Click to read more:

• Unfair story of kid growing up:

“I am 21 years old and I have a father who is 81. …my 52 year old mother, and 17 yr old brother care for him and his declining health…. I don’t think its fair that I am balancing college with strokes, endless doctors appointments, and a nice dose of depression.”

• Studies reveal that sperm motility, volume and quality, do diminish with age. “The quality of sperm changes between the age of 20 and 80,” says biophysicist Andrew Wyrobek of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

• A 2006 study by Columbia University found women pregnant by older men more likely to have a miscarriage—with chances increasing with the male’s age, regardless of the mother’s age.

• Sperm-producing cells are constantly dividing, so the number of possible mutations grows over time, says New York City urologist Natan Bar-Chama, the director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

• For women, age 35 years and up is clearly defined as “advanced maternal age” (AMA) or “elderly gravida”. According to the Mayo Clinic, once a woman reaches age 35, the risk of conceiving a child with Down syndrome is 1 in 400; by age 45, it’s 1 in 35.

Positives

• Older guys may not have the stamina or energy that young dads have, but older men may have more time to devote to parenting. Older men get more involved and participate in the child’s school activities than a younger dad in their 20s and 30s due to career commitments.

Positives

• Quality Time: Older fathers claim, “I know I have spent more quality time with my daughter in the first year of her life than my father did in 10 years of my younger years. I already enjoyed my 30s and 40s I don’t have any yearning for my youth or going out with the boys.”

Positives

• Men who divorced can start a new family, even if they had a vasectomy.

• Click to read more:

Positives

• Being a younger dad isn’t always a safeguard• A fact from a new report that doesn’t get

headlines: Of the 65 participants who have autism or schizophrenia, 12 had fathers who were 25 years or younger. Therefore, being a young dad does not remove the risk of damaging mutations, it just lessens slightly.

Summary

• With all that responsible information, you can make a decision to be a Dad again or meet someone new with the same principles of not having children.